I prayed a prayer to Saint Benedict last night. Weekend before, while searching for First Communion gift for my nephew and their cousin, both my oldest son and daughter found bracelets with the Benedictine cross and medallion. Both are on the rosary I most often wear, and are the medallion of the only necklace that I wear.
Planting a field, knowing my daughter having rode to the city and out shopping with friends, suddenly inclined and seeming called—I prayed to Saint Benedict for the safety of my family.
“Saint Benedict, by your intercession, protect my family.”
Earlier in the day, the cover of a power outlet in our home broke loose from an overloaded washer deciding to move itself in its spin cycle. In my mind, all day, I’d been turning in my head how evil really has no power beyond harassment—which is a blessing in test and refinement of spirit. If evil has any power, it is what we cede to it by our own surrender of will and spirit, our own power—given up—lost by and then used against us.
I knew the broken outlet was nothing but a small harassment, an effort to stop me from my prayers—making spiritual use of nothing but time and open fields and reflecting on beautiful moments of a special day (our oldest two children’s last day of middle school and coming to terms that we now have two high schoolers in our home). The broken outlet, fire hazard, is something that normally would cause me frustration—but I saw it for what it was and didn’t let the devil win.
That is Saint Benedict’s protection.
Feeling the need, I don’t know why, I prayed the prayer.
Not long after, a message came from my wife. Coming home from a baseball game for our youngest son, down a country two-lane road, she hit a deer.
Prayer lived true. No one was hurt.
She limped it home—a slow trek with the distance—but everyone was safe. It is only a car, and it’ll be fixed. It is nothing but a harassment; to dispirit and draw away from all the blessings and miracles that are happening.
N.D.S.M.D. — “Non draco sit mihi dux:” “Let no the dragon be my guide.”
It is only a harassment, testing of the spirit and our determined will to continue in gratitude and praise.
V.R.S.N.S.M.V. — “Vade retro Satana; nunquam suade mihi vana:” “Be gone Satan! Suggest not to me thy vain things.”
The devil didn’t win.
C.S.S.M.L. — “Crux sacra sit mihi lux:” “May the holy cross be for me a light.”
We are divinely loved. We are divinely protected.
Saints listen.
